


you can't eat the dirt

by prufrock



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Babies, Backstory, Body Horror, Childbirth, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Gore, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hallucinations, Horror, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, Miscarriage, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 02:37:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4770392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prufrock/pseuds/prufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Max's head is full of holes, and things come out and in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can't eat the dirt

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I have not seen any of the previous Mad Max movies, and for my money this Max is not literally the same person featured in those films; I'm running with the "legends of Max" concept. I've read the comics but don't consider them essential canon. Also, please do heed the tags.
> 
> Title from the Mirel Wagner song "The Dirt."

Gran isn’t around when the old dog that sleeps in the shed starts to scream. Nobody is but Max. He slips through the door, wiggling under the rusted chain, and creeps close, but she nips at him, so he hides himself behind a busted fridge and watches, chewing on his sleeve, while she screams twice more and something dark and slimy comes out of her, then another something. By the end there’s five of them, all tiny and crying and covered in something bright and slick, and the dog’s shaggy sides are heaving, and Max sneaks out of the shed and sits in the cupboard till Gran comes home and finds him there when she goes to put away the tinned peas.

 

She drags him out, and dusts the back of his pants. What was so good, she asks him, he had to go into the shed, and Max, who’s only five after all, bursts into tears and won’t say. She swats his bum just once and carries him off to scrub his face and get supper on the stove.

 

A few days later, there’s puppies, five tiny blinking things following their mum around the end of the yard, and Max sneaks back into the shed and throws old sheets over the smelly stain in the corner.

 

//

 

“The, uh, the important thing,” Max says, “is, don’t be scared.”

 

He’s talking to her belly, to make her smile, but he means the words for her too, even though he’s so scared himself his insides are sick. He doesn’t have the first idea what to do, every word she read him the last months flown straight out of his thick head, but he’s not the one wet between the legs and panting on the bed, so he’s doing what he can till Miz Martha gets here. He squeezes her hand hard, too hard maybe, and apologizes. She gives him a smile, but her eyes aren’t on him; focused on something inside her. He watches the pain roll up through her body and jumps to grab her other hand before she folds in a sharp angle, grunting out a low, bewildered scream.

 

“Hey, hey,” he says, patting her shoulder, her belly, the shaking top of her thigh. “Hey.” He doesn’t know what else to say. There’s no sound of a bike, so Miz Martha can’t be on her way too quickly, and he hopes she heard him right over the scratchy two-way. You can’t always be sure out here, especially now the storms are getting worse.

 

“You, uh, you want, what, maybe, stand up, or, or,” he asks, letting his mouth run as if maybe it’ll catch up on the right thing by accident. He doesn’t fucking know. He can’t fucking think. Her toes are curling, hands gripping at the wilted quilt, there’s sweat on her forehead and he doesn’t even have anything to wipe it off and make her feel cool. Water’s what you need, water, he thinks boiled but he can’t remember why, and then she screams again, louder, the sound dragging through her throat, rising and cracking, her fingernails biting blood in the side of his hand.

 

She finishes screaming and goes limp, panting, spitting curses into the air above the bed. Max thinks he should look down under her nightshirt, check if anything’s coming, but he’s not sure he wants to see. Her scream’s wormed into his brain, repeating, and he still hasn’t heard the bike.

 

Max goes to get water. He stands on the porch, looking for the dust spray on the horizon, jumping forwards a few paces into the hot sand to squint ferociously into the wind, but there’s nothing, just gas-pink clouds buckling and swerving to the east. He glances down, remembering the pain in his hand, and finds the smear of blood traced from each crusted half-moon.

 

He’s holding the shaking hand in his mouth to suck off the blood when she screams his name from the house, screams again and again, like the world is ending, to fucking come here, right now.

 

The bike sputters to silence outside the house some while later, but Max doesn’t hear it. His arms are blood clear to the elbow, getting it all over the quilt she brought from home, but he doesn’t know that now either. His finger is on a tiny foot, kicking him for the first time without a belly between.

 

//

 

“You?”

 

Feet above the desert, under an iron roof, she breaks a long silence with a sideways glance. It’s been hours since he unglued his mouth to understand the point of all this, the girls in white and the rest of it, this truck under siege from the same nutcase castle that stripped his back and stole his blood and crucified him on a rusty car against the wind. She told him less than he wondered and more than he understood, and now, miles east, she’s turning the question back on him: “What about you?”

 

It’s not much. When she told him about the green place, rocking with the weight of the rig, she used as few words as she needed, but he felt the size of what she didn’t say, the years she could have told him between that day and now, a tight scroll in her brain she could unfurl but doesn’t want to, not here and not, maybe, for him. Any of the girls sleeping behind them could do the same, he thinks. They’re just kids. They probably know their birthdays.

 

He feels that missing in his head. There’s no scroll, no reel of days to move through. Some explosion too bright a few years ago, and nothing ever came back right after that. Faces show up when they want to and not when he tries to find them; he can never be sure what’s long past and what’s right behind. She has a story to cling to, to tell in reverse in this hot stinking truck, and he’s got a name. No backwards and forwards to that. Just a sound.

 

He remembers a picture house in the middle of the desert.

 

Couldn’t have been much of a draw even in the days before the earth turned sick and highways were battlegrounds; there was no ghost town buried in the sand around it, no smashed houses where folks might have lived when they weren’t next door at the flicks. This was a place you drove to, Saturdays when the winds weren’t up, waited for the kid to hoist the reel up and hid in patched folding seats for an hour or two, just eating up the fans.

 

When Max found it, half the seats were gone, ripped out to strap into cars or stash in houses, and the floor underneath bared layers of gouged wood, yellow dust and rat shit. The place smelled of them, soft bodies running open under the seats left behind, clawing up the moldy, peeling walls. One ran over his shoe; a baby, he thought. Things growing still, here.

 

Then something fell inside the tiny black window set high in the back wall; a sharp thump and a cry; not a rat, something human. That’s where it ends, the last breath before a riot, colors shifting into cold adrenaline gray and sputtering out. He can’t remember who was there. He thinks he walked away clean, but he can’t be certain why it’s stuck inside his head when so much else slipped through the open holes.

 

She’s waiting, he realizes, not impatient or intent on dragging anything out, but leaving an ear open as she scans the horizon in front of them, checks the mirrors for anyone in pursuit. He shifts in his seat, one of the points of fire in his back sticking and pulling against rough cloth.

 

“Mmm,” he says, swallowing dust, glancing behind to count the heads lined up across the seat. No more than before: a good sign. He faces forward again, reassured.

 

“I,” he tells her, throat soft with disuse, “I just drive.”

 

//

 

In the cage, a hundred times a day, he sees her shadow.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, in the blurred slush of light that lives on the edge of his vision, that spills across his eyes whenever meaty fingers fuss and press down at the dip in his neck, lapping eagerly for a place to dig in. Never for long; she doesn’t like to stay, not when there’s people around. But he sees her: dark hair, tiny feet, an instant that passes before he can gather breath to call after her. Every time, his heart tries to bolt, and somebody shouts and usually wallops his head to calm him down.

 

At night, he hears her whispering. He can’t whisper back. Too many ears here. Too dangerous. But he listens, and waits, and when she comes to the crack in the rocks and peers over, curious to see the iron on his wrists, he holds her eyes for hours. It takes an effort, but he’s patient.

 

Max, she calls him, night after night. _Max, come and find me. Max, I’m here, why’d you leave. Where’d you go, Max_.

 

He can’t get to her. He rips a chunk from his wrist one night, tugging too hard at the cuffs; everything’s wet all at once, a tiny waterfall gushing over his hands, making skin and metal sticky. He has time to hear the sharp splats on the stone below before hot hands are dragging him down, strapping his arms and pricking the skin together with a wiry twist of thread, hissing in his ear to stop the monkeying and stay quiet unless he wants a very pleasant trip out the side of the tower.

 

He doesn’t, not yet anyway, so he shuts his mouth and shakes his head and closes his eyes to focus hard on catching the thread of her voice as the chains pick him up again. He knows it’s there, even if he can’t hear it right now—and sure enough, when the Mechanic’s down at the other end of the hall, she whispers in his ear: _Max?_

 

He never thinks till he’s alone again that if she could really stand there, her head would barely reach the bottom of his cage.

 

//

 

The sound of tires on bone follows him for miles afterwards, a gentle ringing in the ear with powder burns from earlier than morning. In the seat behind him, everyone’s crying, muffled voices cracking into pain. A few times, he feels a sharp heel in his back, pressing through the layers of leather to nudge him below the kidneys. He ignores it, focusing on holding the wheel steady as his left hand shakes, bleeding out adrenaline and pain as they gather space from the roaring chaos behind them.

 

Once, he thinks he hears the sharp grunt of pain again, but when he whips around to look, it’s just the four heads huddled along the back of the cab. Beside him, she turns to look as well.

 

“Let them sleep,” she says, and Max grunts, turning his head and shaking it twice, trying to dislodge the insistent whine of axles.

 

It stays with him as they wind through the pass and out onto the plains again. Night falls and real noise overwhelms them, drowning out the voice of wheels, but it rumbles in the back of his head all the next day, a sharp anguish of rubber repeating incessantly against the inside of his skull like a drip that won’t dry.

 

The second night, the noise settles in his ears, and keeps him awake, pacing the blue earth between the quiet groups of bodies. He counts heads—two dark, one white, one flaming red—and worries at his blasted ear, watching the sky blink and shadows climb the dunes behind the silent rig.

 

//

 

He’s back in the picture house, the ruin outside of reality, and the soles of his boots skim loose sawdust and grains of moldy foam, kicking aside a piece of somebody’s old wheelchair, scavenged almost past recognition. It’s cooler inside than out, like the windowless building trapped the night air and is letting it out slowly now as the sun passes the day outside.

 

He ignores the dark, sour spatters in a nearby corner and heads toward the front of the theater where most of the remaining chairs are lined, following an instinct. His stomach is light and his eyes are heavy, pulling his head insistently down, making him sway and shake his head on the spot as he picks through rubble and broken glass to where he can lie down and close his eyes. He’s been chasing this for hours, days maybe, but nowhere he’s been has been quiet like this. He almost forgot what quiet sounds like: rich and solid and open, a dense cloud pressing him down, dizzy, towards the filthy floor.

 

He’s on his knees in debris, brushing loosely through the dust to clear a space without glass, when the first thump comes—quick and dull, high overhead, near the back of the hall. There’s no echo, and at first he thinks it’s just his own tired blood pounding in his skull, but then there’s another: something falling, or kicking, in the booth above. Not a rat, he thinks. Too heavy. And something else, a sense he can’t name or place, growing under his skin.

 

Silently, he rolls to his feet again, lifted by the tired spark of adrenaline in his legs and shoulders.

 

The stairs leading up to the projection room are well hidden, but Max finds his way in the end, putting one cautious foot after the other on the uncarpeted boards, easing into each agonized creak as the smell of dying rat grows stronger. He knows he’s inviting a gun in his face at the top of the steps, but his brain’s too fuzzed with exhaustion to spill any better option, and besides, if whoever’s up there wanted him dead they’d have had a clear shot when he strolled straight across the open floor of the theater. So he’s calm, calmer than he should be, maybe, as he reaches the flimsy, half-kicked-in door at the top of the stairs, and turns the wobbly handle.

 

The lights on the stairs went out a long time ago, so there’s no adjusting to the foul darkness behind the door, but it takes him a minute to see her among the piles of rubbish, crouching behind the stripped-down tower of the projector. She’s very small, the smallest person he’s seen in a very long time. Maybe eight, he thinks, though he knows people don’t grow so big these days, and for all he knows she might be twelve, seventeen, a tiny thirty-year-old girl with a black snarl of hair confusing her dirty white face.

 

“Pa?” she asks, voice like a whistle. Max freezes, jerks spontaneously to look behind him, but there’s just the still mouth of the stairwell leading down and out, and he realizes, gears clicking belatedly into place, that she meant him. She thinks he’s her pa.

 

“Oh,” he summons up, shaking his head. “No.” She blinks at him and repeats it as though he never spoke, and Max starts to feel, once again, like he’s stumbled on a trap. He’s heard of this kind of thing; machines with voices left to lure the stupid, triggers set to blow. But this isn’t that; he inches closer, squinting at her face, and no—it’s just a girl, asking for her pa. Something in her face tells Max her pa hasn’t been by in a long time.

 

He moves forward cautiously, arms out, and bends down to her, shaking his head when she pipes, “Pa?” for a third time.

 

“I’m not your pa,” he forces, awkward over the stiff consonants, squinting at her empty eyes, talking the way he might to a hurt animal. “What you doing here, huh? Where—” he chokes, from the smell as much as uncertainty, “where’s your folks?”

 

Her eyes narrow, then, taking him in, flicking over his heavy jacket, the metal on his leg, the crusted blood over his left eye from the fire down by the sunken lake days back. She swallows, a high gurgle of pain, and whispers, “Ma said Pa was coming.”

 

“Ma?” He spins again, searching the shadows for someone he might have missed, someone waiting all this time for him to get inside, a trap after all. But none of the shadows jump at him; everything’s quiet, just him and a girl and a row of ravaged machines skirted with reeking trash. A few rats, scuttling back and forth from a sloppy heap in the far corner.

 

He turns back to the girl, asks where Ma went, and she lifts her head from her knees for the first time to twist back, stretching out her arm to show him.

 

She points to the corner.

 

The woman’s face might have been restful a few days ago, but Max doubts it. He knew before coming closer that there’d be no one here to save, and the long gray slick of skin falling down below her curly hairline makes that clear. Near his foot, a nest of maggots, clean and eager, twitch with life, and a lean, scabby rat, eyeing Max territorially, wrestles loose a spongy hunk from what used to be, if Max’s guess is right, a foot. It lopes busily towards the wall, disappearing with its sour prize while Max watches. Behind him, the girl calls, “Ma?”

 

He keeps his hand on her back the whole way down the stairs, patting awkwardly as he searches cautiously for purchase on each protesting step. She holds her hands over her face just like he showed her, long after they’re clear of the stairs and heading out towards the falling light, the smell of her ma carried on her clothes and in his nose even in the stormy desert air. He sets her down, feet slipping in the sand, and taps her wrist to let her know she can take her hands away. He points to the car, half-hidden in the shadow of the looming picture house.

 

She frowns at him, looking back like she’s waiting for the lady upstairs to follow, dribbling worms down the mildewed staircase. Max grunts and shakes his head, _no, she’s not coming_ , and the girl looks up at him, solemn and curious.

 

“Who’re you?” she asks, a kid’s question, like it’s only occurred to her now. Max shifts on his feet, clears his throat to find his voice, and tells her.

 

“Max.”

 

Eight days later, on the upper plain, the trucks catch up to them.

 

//

 

“The important thing,” Max says, “is, don’t be scared.”

 

Her belly is huge under his hands, golden skin taut like she’s holding the world inside. He can feel how hard she’s breathing, and he wants to reassure her, this tall girl with so much anger in her scarred face: all of this, the pain, the terrible waiting, it’s all normal and it ends, and her baby will kick her fingers and blubber so loud she’ll think it’s the strongest baby in the world. She’s quiet now, waiting. Her skin stretches as he runs his palms over it, writhing, the harsh cry from inside strangled and wanting. _She wants to come out._

 

He reaches under, wondering why it happened so fast, feeling as though something’s been missed, but the rush of blood is sure and familiar. Only it’s too much, a slick handful and then another, falling from her in slithering clots, neverending; something’s gone wrong. He’s kneeling between her legs, his hands cupping blood, and when he looks up to her face she’s watching him with stony eyes. _What are you doing_ , she asks. _What are you doing to me._

 

He looks, and sees where the blood is coming from. The baby’s come after all—halfway, at least. Heart drumming, Max reaches in and tugs as gently as he can, and the waterfall finishes in his hands, heavy and sticky and smelling sour.

 

She’s small, but too big; he’s suddenly afraid, thinking how anyone so big could come out of a body. He’s puzzling over this, trying to remember how small she looked a moment ago, when he realizes she isn’t breathing. She’s still and too heavy in his hands, not kicking at all, white eyes turned to the ceiling, and the hot, rasping wail he’s only just noticed is deafening him isn’t hers.

 

He looks back to the bed, breath frozen in his chest. The top of her head is gone, just blonde hair and blood soaking the old quilt, but her mouth is open, a dark, rigid hole screaming at him, cursing and wailing and shrieking his name, _how could you, how could you, you let us die, you let everyone die, how could you, Max?_

 

Her nails are sharp at the corners of his eyes as he wakes up, panting and falling in the cold sand.

 

The desert’s empty, shaking with every loud thump of his heart against his ribs, the stars overhead shuddering in place like they’re going to shake loose and fall. He squeezes his eyes shut; he’s too dizzy for that, too busy trying to find his own breath in his weak, heaving chest. Her voice, a worm sleeping deep in his brain, echoes at him from every side, churning together with the sound of screaming wheels. It’s the same voice that’s followed him every night out here, ever since he stole a car and put miles between him and the swarming prison tower, ever since he crashed the car and walked on with a stiffening shoulder. Even when the dream is his broken hand slipping a thousand times on a leather belt, hers is the voice that chases him through the wasteland, tireless even as he feels himself fading.

 

It’s a long time, hugging his body close to make himself small among the dunes, before he discovers that the wheels are real, and not inside him at all. They’re coming towards him across the sand under a sturdy engine, too close to run from, and Max rolls himself like a beetle in the sand, waiting as the engine dies and short, heavy strides cross the earth to stop beside him. He tastes salt, and hears a soft click as someone bends down to touch his back.

 

Heavy, living metal, and his name.

 

//

 

They’re standing in the sunlight on one of the lower roofs, around the side of the Citadel where the shadows move slower. It’s a hundred days since Max was here, and the tow-headed baby that could barely sit up the last time is swaying doggedly on his unsteady feet, round hands gripping one calloused finger each to keep from falling. While his mother works in the sun higher up, he’s showing his red-headed aunt and the man from nowhere his newest trick of walking.

 

Max is patting away tears after the baby’s second tumble when he finds Capable’s eyes on him, curious and searching. He focuses on the baby, flicking a finger at his round belly till the sobs turn to giggles, but when he looks back up she’s still watching him, a question waiting behind her steady eyes.

 

She waits until the Dag comes back to gather up her baby, still awkward in her shoulders as she clutches him to her skinny hip. When she’s gone, Capable bends to pick up the shawl the baby tugged off her shoulders earlier to wave for a few triumphant seconds and then forget. She stands winding it around her hand, a soft empty bundle, then hugs it to her chest and stares out, following Max’s gaze across the distant yellow sand. She watches in silence for a long minute before she speaks, her voice low and drawn, her long hair vexed by the wind off the waste.

 

“Did you ever have any?” she asks. “Of your own.”

 


End file.
